


Second Winter

by thesecondseal



Series: Acts of Reclamation [14]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:50:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Inquisition passes its second winter at Skyhold in preparation for the march to the Arbor Wilds. Cullen and Essa navigate the peaks and valleys of their relationship, coming to terms with their differing faiths, while Cari winters at the new templar holding, Clifton. Most of these are previously written drabbles now collected in proper chronology, but all the Cari stuff is new. Because Krem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Firstfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cari, Krem, and Sera. Friendship fluff at the new templar holding.

Winter rolled down in earnest from the Frostbacks, sharp and cold and bleak. For weeks the grey persisted, interrupted only by a frigid soak that left the grounds muddy and the Maker’s children—both two-legged and four—surly.  The almanacs called for clear skies, but Cari was skeptical, she had been sloughing through Firstfall since Satinalia, the holiday light gradually eclipsed by the dreary weather.

Cari lay in bed, watching dawn creep into the cozy confines of her small room. Her quarters were not even as lavish as what she had been given when she served the Chantry in Ostwick, but they suited her. The heavy blankets on the bed were gifts from her friends. Velvet from Josie, a patchwork quilt from Sera and Krem, a pair of knitted throws from Cullen and Essa, the former a tight precise weave of violet and forest, the latter beginners rows of dropped and double stitches in shades of brown.

Cari yawned wide, jaw cracking the heavy silence of the morning as she rolled out of bed. Her bare feet rooted to the warmth of the rag rug Nadie had sent to her in the last shipment of goods from Skyhold before the pass froze completely; the floor beyond would be too cold to stand on, and she still hated sleeping in socks. There were moments when she found herself longing forward to spring and her return to Skyhold, and last night her dreams had teased her. Not that she wasn’t content at Clifton. She had friends here. The type she was accustomed to, quiet, careful, never too close. She enjoyed tea with Ser Barris every other afternoon over shared reports and the matters of building and maintaining the keep. Delrin was handsome and kind, with a smile that warmed everyone fortunate enough to experience its rarity.

But he did not make her swear or laugh, nor long for more than she was.

She wrapped Essa’s throw around her shoulders, threw back the heavy curtains from the single narrow window of her small room with a silent, heart lifting gasp. Clifton had been made new in the night, rough edges and faults hidden by a blanket of snow that glittered beneath the dawn like the fine dust of infinite diamonds. The morning held promise. There were not many children at Clifton, but those would soon fill the day with laughter and play. Cari dressed quickly in leggings, tunic, and thick socks, the first of several layers. The season might be kinder to the Hinterlands, but it was still cruel enough to seep into new stone, to lie like old aches in the ancient foundation. Cari’s room stayed warm enough with its proximity to the kitchens, but once beyond, the air was frosted, biting at exposed skin, and settling into bones more accustomed to a northern climate.

She wasn’t as young as she once was.

Cari moved slowly into the stretching exercises Essa had showed her, bending her body to wakefulness as the light paled to grey in the stillness of her room. Beyond the door she could hear the kitchen rousing. Lonne had started the bread hours ago, but now that the loaves had risen enough to go in the ovens, the other staff was joining him. She could hear bowls and spoons and knives striking a symphony of preparation on the long wooden counters, knew that in the training yard Delrin would already be moving through his own exercises, his discipline no doubt leaving footprints in the snow, complicated patterns too easily mistaken for a dancer’s grace.

She was fond of him, proud of the work they were doing, and grateful for his ear. They met most morning for prayers, knelt in the cold, silence of the chantry before Cari began her duties. Theirs was a small parish, nothing like what she had served in before, and until a new Divine was chosen and the proper bureaucratic channels back in place, Cari found herself mostly in charge of the chapel and its services. She was not a mother to lead anyone in worship, but what they had instead was something more honest for all its informality. The templars and the villagers visited regularly enough for prayers, in the morning and the evening. Cari led them in the chant several times a week, but mostly when two or more of them were gathered, they simply sat at Andraste’s feet and spoke of the Maker’s blessings in their lives or the Bride’s grace. If there were needs that could be met with petitions to their Maker, then prayers were offered on the supplicant’s behalf.

Their provincial worship would be the height of blasphemies in Val Royeaux, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind. That she could see devotion so like her sister’s in the faces of the reverent only made of Cari a greater heretic.  She found herself less and less interested in the theology Essa liked to argue, and more concerned with the workings of faith. Watch the teeth, Essa liked to say. Not the bark. Most creatures were more of one than the other, so far Cari knew few as balanced in that as her sister.

She missed her too. It was a curious thing considering how many years they had spent apart, but as the winter and the mountains stretched between them, Cari felt the measure of so much time lost. She would have regretted her decision to winter at Clifton did she not believe that Essa and Cullen deserved their season together.

None of them knew what waited for them in the spring.

“Lady Carilyna?” Lonne’s knock punctuated his call through the door, a sharp rap nearly obscuring each syllable. The cook was younger than Cari, a father of three, husband to one of the templars currently in the Western Approach.

And the man had more energy than Sera.

“Just a moment.” She finished dressing with brisk economy. Layered skirts and tunics on with care for the day’s weather and work, before belting on her heavy coat. The leather was softer now, intended for winters not nearly as bleak, but layered with the rest she was warm enough.

“Good morning.” She opened the door, greeting offered as brightly as she could manage with her hair still down around her face and not a splotch of color on her cheeks.  “Is there something amiss?”

“No, my lady, I—“ Lonne ran one hand through his blonde hair in frustration. The shock of contrast to his dark brown skin made Cari want to start painting again. It had been years, and the days were far too short.

The air from kitchen was warm; it pushed past her like spiced wind, filling her with the sweet pungency of yeast and the lingering scents of cinnamon and apple. She had helped Lonne and the others all day yesterday, taking turns at the great kettle of apples in the yard, stirring with a board she thought better served as a door post.  They had brought it in late in the evening, served apple butter and dumplings for an after supper treat.

“You have a visitor. In the main yard.”

Cari glanced back at her bedroom window, gauged the pearling of the morning as her throat tightened. Good news did not come so early. “It’s barely past dawn.”

“I know, my lady.” And the concern in Lonne’s blue eyes was not reassuring. “Would you like me to come with you?”

He wiped flour covered hands on the front of his apron.

“Thank you,” she reached to squeeze his arm gently, halting his attempts to clean up. “No. I’m sure Ser Barris will not be far this time of morning.”

Lonne nodded and Cari shoved her feet hastily into her boots, leaving the laces partially undone and realizing, with uncharacteristic pique, exactly why Essa eschewed such inconveniences.

“Was there a name?” she asked, tugging on gloves and catching up her scarf.

“I’m sorry, my lady.”

*

The as-yet-unfinished keep at Clifton was architecturally unremarkable. The outer walls, once complete, would form a large rectangle with a short tower on either side of the gate, and the keep situated almost dead center, dividing the grounds into distinct yards for training, for welcome, and for Clifton’s kitchens. The chantry stood in the front easternmost corner, pale stone and dark wood door, stained glass windows the Order’s only current vanity. Early morning light bounced off of the chapel, picked up on quartz deposits amid the limestone and set it to sparkling above the pure white snow.

Sera sprawled into a half-seated pose on a splitting stump, feet propped on firewood that had been left out uncovered. It wouldn’t be much use to anyone until it dried, but she seemed comfortable enough, limbs akimbo in more layers that she liked, bright yellow bee-stitch cowl covering her neck and the lower half of her face. She was ready to get back to the city. Any city. Cullen and Essa had eachother now and there was more work for Red Jenny than ever. A winter of intrigue waited in Val Royeaux and Halamshiral and the Inquisition would be grateful for whatever information she could pass their way.

If they all survived Coryfitits, there would be a new Divine to choose. Sera snickered every time she thought of all the stuffed chantry shirts asking Essa for her opinion on the sunburst throne.

“We should have waited,” Krem groused, nerves hitching his usual affable tone into something rough. “Mid-morning, mid-day.”

It was too early to be dropping in unexpectedly.

“Pssh—“ Sera shook her head. “Too cold to sleep last night anyway. Not that you were getting any.”

“Sera.”

She ignored the warning, skipping blithely into a giggling taunt.

“You’re not still pretendin’ you’re here on official business are you?”

“I have a letter for Lady Cari from her worship.” Krem patted the breast pocket of his heavy cloak.

“If that letter says anything more than ‘oh, Cully-Wully…’” she trailed off into a lewd imitation of sounds that had indeed been heard coming from the command tower lately. “I’ll eat my hat. Well, your hat. I rather like my hat. Essa’s first knit, she’s shit at it, but I like the color and it keeps my ears warm.”

She was adjusting the lopsided garment in question when Cari came flying around the side of the keep.

“Well,” Sera said, words somehow managing to convey, with far less emotion, all that Krem was feeling. “Would you look at her?”

She was dressed in peasant layers. Wool in shades of brown and undyed cream. Skirts and tunic peeking from beneath the haphazard cinch of her long leather coat. The dark violet was a clash of wealth, but the contrast suited her in a way Krem would not have expected. Her scarf was a tapestry of pansies, wound with the same apparent haste around her neck as the coat was belted to her narrow waist. Cari’s dark hair streamed behind her, waves loose and sleep-tangled. He had never seen it in such disarray and now he could think of nothing more than seeing her so undone every morning. The weeks without her at Skyhold had been some of the dullest and coldest of his life, and no, Krem had _not_ felt like talking about it; he knew that the chief had sent him out with Sera just to give him something to do.

Cari held her skirts up from the snow as she hurried toward them, and he noticed that her boots weren’t laced completely.

“Shit, Sera, we’ve scared her to death showing up like this.”

Krem cursed them both for being inconsiderate fools.

“Everything is fine!” he called across the yard, rushing forward to meet her.

Relief shivered through the lavender mist of her gaze, but it was short lived. He watched helplessly as the dangling laces of one boot caught beneath the sole of the other. There was a flash of panic across her face as she saw the fall coming, her customary grace tossed skyward with wind-milling arms and a little smile of chagrin.

He wasn’t close enough to catch her, but that didn’t stop Krem from diving for her anyway. He hit the ground hard, could only be thankful for the thick carpet of snow that cushioned both their falls. The slant of yard slowed him even as it threw Cari forward that much more quickly. They both landed face first in the snow, Krem’s arms thrown toward her, hands attempting—and somehow making—a clumsy catch of her head while Sera’s laughter raced across the courtyard in uproarious abandon.

“My lady.” Her cheeks were cradled in his palms, the silk of her hair tangled in grasping fingers, and Krem told himself that he was breathless only from the fall. “I’m sorry. So sorry. Are you hurt?”

She laughed and for a moment he could only stare at her, mouth gaping.

“You said everything was fine, yes?” Cari asked, a swipe of her tongue across snow-dusted lips.

“Yes,” he said gruffly.

“Then I am not hurt.” Was that her cheek pressing deliberately into his palm? Krem stared at his gloves in frustration before her earnest declaration brought him back.  “Maker, Krem. It is good to see you.”

He couldn’t tell if the rose blooming in her cheeks was from the cold, the flurry of her fall, or something more.

She gifted Sera with a grin as she drew away from him. “Both of you,” she added.

“Can’t say I would have wanted to miss that,” Sera called back, still laughing.

“Yes, well.” Cari straightened her clothes, rising to her feet with grace restored. “You’ll kindly avoid adding that to what I’ve heard is a very excellent curation of sketches back at the Skyhold.”

Sera snorted. “Oi, I’ve missed that snooty way you have with words.”

Krem climbed to his feet, stamping snow from his legs and brushing what he could from his clothes as Sera rambled across the yard to join them. Cari pulled her into an impulsive hug that he couldn’t help but envy.

“Have you two come to join me for the winter?” she asked, hope and disbelief casting violet shadows in her eyes.

“Pay up,” Sera said to Krem, sticking out her tongue as well as her hand and snuggling her smaller frame into Cari’s embrace. “She missed us.”

“I truly have,” Cari said.

“Well.” Krem fished out a coin for Sera, slapped it into her glove. “I guess that settles it.”


	2. Promises of the Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous smut in correct chronology. Cullen x Essa.

Essa stretched slowly between soft, cool sheets. The white linen had cost far too much—Josie had found them as some fancy shop in Val Royeaux—to waste on the bed Essa never slept in. She had given them to Cullen. She understood without him telling her that there were nights when the slightest imperfections in his bedding scraped at his over-wrought nerve endings.

She lay beside him in the stillness, watching dawn creep into the mountains like a specter and listening to him breathe. She wasn’t certain if he was awake yet, and they both knew to be careful waking one another with a touch. She waited for the shadows to lighten as the sky above them pearled against the barrier that shimmered between the ragged edges of the broken roof.

Cullen’s back was to her, and she would never stop taking that gift for the gut-wrenching declaration of trust that it was.  Essa’s gaze slid away. She could linger over precious scars and battle-honed muscles later—when he was awake—but she would not have the weight of her gaze drag him from sleep too often studded with nightmares.

“Cullen?”

Essa felt him tense, the long line of his spine going rigid. Still asleep then. She didn’t move, drew in a slow breath to relax her own body’s response to danger. They both woke on that same edge. The only time Essa didn’t was when she slept in Geri’s stall.

“You stayed,” Cullen murmured in surprise, voice thick with sleep.

He rolled toward her, then over her, fitting his hips against hers, long legs stretching between her thighs, her calves. She pressed her feet to his ankles and Cullen propped himself on his arms to smile down at her. Essa grinned back.

“I did.”

“Did you sleep at all?” he asked, bending to place a soft kiss on her neck.

He still wore Diar’s medallion, it hung down on its chain, dragging heavily across her skin before Cullen’s lips pressed, warm and wet to the sudden leap of her pulse.

“I tried,” she replied. “I think I dozed a bit before sunrise.”

“You’re cool to the touch.”

He whispered the words between kisses, each one a question that he no longer had to ask. Essa arched up, pushing her hips against his and drawing moans from them both.

“You don’t have to ask,” she said breathlessly.

Cullen skimmed one hand up her side, the rough pads of his fingers teasing the peak of her nipple before dancing along her collarbone. The long scar from the Winter Palace had sensitized the skin rather than deadening it. They had discovered that together.

“I’ll always ask,” he promised softly. “Though not necessarily with words.”

Essa gasped when his teeth followed the wandering of his fingers, nipping at her aching breast before traveling to the raised and pebbled flesh of her scar. He soothed the bright bursts of pleasure-pain with his tongue, then blew across the moisture his mouth left behind.

“I trust you to stop me,” he said, words peppered between kisses, the cool brush of metal trailing as he made his way to her lips.

“And I you,” Essa whispered.

She caught his face in her hands, blunt nails scraping through the scruff on his cheeks. He slid inside of her without warning, eyes molten, gleaming gold in the early light. Their joining was bright and sudden, the friction just on the right side of too much. Essa turned her face, teeth sinking into his shoulder to muffle her scream of pleasure. She pulled back almost immediately, breath stuttering.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, placing gentle kisses over the marks from her teeth.

He smiled down at her. It was an apology she had made before and one she would likely make again. Essa tried to be more careful with his past than her own. Cullen raked his teeth across the taut cords of muscle in her neck in retaliation, and her body clenched around him. She felt her body begin to heat as desire coiled high and heady.

“Open your eyes, Es.”

She snapped her gaze to his, grounding herself in his stare.

“Are we good?” he asked softly.

His muscles were stretched as tightly as her own as he held himself still above her. Essa nodded.

“I—“

She lost her words as he began to move. Her hands slid, grasping and desperate down his back as a storm built between them. Their breathing was ragged; Essa’s voice tossed on sea of broken moans. She tried to call his name. Cullen smirked at her as the syllables scattered like flotsam into the morning. Essa’s eyes narrowed at the expression. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging in to press him deeper. His eyes closed, motion stumbling.

It was her turn to smirk.

“Cullen?” She managed his name at the same time that he laughed.

The sound bounced between them, adding another layer of dizzying sensation.

“Essa?” His jaw was clenched, but he was smiling.

“I don’t,” she gasped. “Think I’m going to have your usual stamina, Commander.”

Cullen laughed again and bent to kiss her. “Hold on to me.”

She eyed him warily, tightened her arms and legs around him. Cullen pressed up and back, moving them both with delicious shifts and bumps until he sat upright, holding her against him, his legs folded beneath them both. Essa trembled around him, her eyes wide and searching his amid a tempest of new sensations. She clung to him, sweat breaking across her skin.

“Too much?” he asked, giving them both time to adjust.

“No,” Essa whispered.

Her heart thundered in her chest, the cage of her ribs seeming too weak to contain it. Her skin felt thin, body fragile like spun glass, still holding too much heat.

“Eyes on me,” Cullen’s voice rumbled, pulling her back from the fire.

He dipped his chin down, claimed her lips in a kiss so gentle Essa thought she would break beneath it. She touched his face with shaking hands, could only pray he knew the things she couldn’t say. There were too many promises they couldn’t give each other. Not yet. Not with war and death looming beyond the cold. But she sipped the vows from his lips, licked pledges into his mouth. They parted for air, and Cullen pressed his forehead to hers and holding her pleasure-blurred gaze as they moved slowly, irrevocably together. When she finally came apart in his arms, it was like a wave of bright crystal breaking over her, clear and ephemeral.

“Together,” she whispered as the edge pulled her toward him, and whatever he saw in her eyes drew Cullen shuddering with her.


	3. Dire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Essa and Cullen have a safe word, an all stop for when anything (be it arguments, social situations, sexual situations) becomes too much. Relationships aren't always easy, especially when two people have the histories of trauma and abuse that these two do, but that doesn't mean they're impossible. It doesn't mean that it's not absolutely worth *working together* to find and build your safe places.
> 
> This is a previously written prompt from themightyzan, written in first person from Essa's pov. Placed here for proper chronology.
> 
> Inspired by this quote from Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar (which is a wonderful series that everyone should read. for serious): “We pay for sins we do not remember, and seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god’s chosen.”

Skyhold’s chapel was dark. Moonlight stained the glass behind the altar; the night beyond the windows was a bruise of sky. It would be a flurry of white before the moons were high. Snow was coming. The heavy clouds were crowding in the south. Soon the moonlight would falter behind them. I had lit only two candles at the Bride’s feet. One for each of us. The statue’s hands were raised in benediction, but the form was too large, too imposing. Andraste stood too far above her petitioners and the grace she offered with open hands was just out of reach.

It wasn’t right, I thought angrily. I placed my hands on the marble, legs braced. The cool stone felt fragile beneath the heat of my fury. It wouldn’t take much, I thought, to crash the icon to the floor and scatter the Bride like rubble.  But it wasn’t Andraste I was angry with. It was that centuries of her teachings had been twisted for power and cruelty.

And I was tired of watching them destroy a good man.

The door burst open angrily, Cullen’s ire fortified by a howl of wind. I pulled my hands from the statue, wiping them on my bare legs as if to rid them of my guilt. I watched in flinty silence as Cullen closed the door more gently behind him. He leaned against the heavy wood, arms braced as if he had been followed and was preparing to battle an intruder.

“You ran from me,” he accused in disbelief.

Cullen didn’t turn to face me. His hands still pressed against the door, head bowed between his arms. He stared at his feet and I could hear the slow careful breaths that he took.

“And you thought that pursuing me was the best strategy?” I asked incredulously.

It hadn’t been our best moment. What had begun as a simple disagreement on theology had soon become an intensely personal divergence. Heated words had turned to uncharacteristic shouting and too characteristic stubbornness, until spite drove us to opposite sides of the bed.

“You. Ran. From. Me,” Cullen repeated, so slowly and deliberately that I knew he was even angrier than he had been when I left.

He turned to face me then, arms falling to his sides, eyes bright and predatory with carefully controlled rage.

“Are you afraid of me?” the query was dangerously soft.

I dragged a breath in through my nose. It was our first real fight, but with the darkness of the chapel stretching between us, it felt like our last.

“Are _you_ afraid of _me_?” I returned.

“Of course not,” he answered so quickly that I laughed.

“You’re either a liar,” I accused. “Or a fool then.”

“ _You_ ran from _me_ ,” he said for a third time with careful emphasis. “Out into the snow, wearing nothing but my tunic.”

He, of course, had taken the time to dress completely. The sight of him in his armor infuriated me.

“I. have. a. temper,” I ground out.

I lifted my hands in a harsh parody of the statue behind me. Fire poured down like water, splashing on the stone beneath my bare feet.  Cullen’s eyes narrowed, and I knew the moment he reached for his former abilities. Even in the dim light, I saw the flush of shame darken his face when he caught the impulse. His hands tightened into fists at his sides.

“I have never seen you run from a fight, Essa.”

It took too much effort for the words to sound civil. I smiled at him coldly and dropped my hands. The fire vanished.

“You have,” I said.

He believed me, but he couldn’t remember. Such an unusual occurrence should have stood out in his mind, but today was not one of his better days.

“Remind me.”

The request was not quite a plea and one upon which we had long agreed. I would never use his occasional memory lapses against him. He would never chase me. We could pause any moment at any time with a single spoken word. I watched his mind catch up to his actions. He turned back to the door.

“Forgive me.”

All heat and anger were gone from him. His head hung and I wanted to rage anew.

“It was when Vivienne said that any child of mine would have to live in a Circle.”

The words tumbled out in a rush before he could open the door. I watched his back stiffen with remembered anger. I had run that day alright. It was that, or punch the enchanter in the face, and nothing good would have come from violence between us.

“I made you that angry?” he asked quietly.

“You did,” I replied.

So angry that I had feared my helplessness would consume us both.

“My faith,” he began in a practiced, even tone.

“Your faith,” I said, interrupting him. “Has raked your heart over too many coals.”

There were tears in my eyes. I shook my head.

“’We pay for sins we do not remember,’” I whispered. “’And seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god’s chosen.’”

They were lines from one of my favorite books. A heretical work, old and rare and outlawed long ago. Cullen frowned at me.

“We are all the Maker’s Chosen,” I told him. “And we blister on pyres of our own making.”

I had been watching him burn for so many months now, but who was I to insist he quench those flames while I still smoldered?

Cullen opened his mouth to speak, but I held up one hand. There was nothing else to be said.

“Dire.”

I whispered the word into shadows between us, calling a stop to all further discussion. He couldn’t ask why; I couldn’t slip one last dig in. The conversation was over the moment one of us used the escape signal. He had spoken the word twice now, but I never had. The word settled like a wall between us.


	4. Prayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes we think an argument is over, but sometimes it has simply been put to bed, resting quietly to rise up again later. Prayers is a follow up to the argument in the last drabble. Being a devout Andrastian whose faith is too easily tied to his guilt, Cullen definitely has to make some peace with Essa's more heretical beliefs.
> 
> Previously written one shot in first person from Essa's pov. Bonus short pov shift (Cullen's. tumblr prompted) in the notes at the end.

I didn’t liked praying indoors. As a child, it was difficult enough for my parents to get me to services. By the time I reached adolescence my mother had given up and denounced me as a woeful pagan and left me to my sin. I tried not to judge her harshly for it. She was, like many, of small frightened mind. She clung to what passed for faith among her peers with a desperate trembling of superiority. One crack and it would all come crashing down around her.

I never had trouble believing in the Maker or understanding how Andraste could look upon her people and see how they might have fallen short of his grace. But no matter how beautiful the liturgy, how perfect the carvings, resplendent the glass, or rich and luxurious the fabrics, I stared around the Chantry and saw man’s will, not the Maker’s.

Despite the warning carefully tucked away in Leliana’s teasing, it wasn’t our differences as mage and Templar that gave me worry about my and Cullen’s relationship. It was our religious differences.  We shared the same god, and a reverence for the Chant, but I would never kneel in supplication, begging forgiveness for my unworthiness.

It broke my heart that he did. If his Maker could look down on how Cullen struggled every day to be a better man and still find him unworthy, then this was not a god who deserved my praise.

I struggled against rage as Cullen struggled against self-recriminations, pain, and doubt. I couldn’t take it from him, no matter how much I wanted to. For every moment of happiness he found with me, a dozen would follow where he floundered in guilt for daring to reach for some small shred of joy.

“So you do kneel to pray.”

I glanced up from my devotions amid the small bed of dawn-colored wildflowers that Josie and I had planted for Leliana in a corner of the garden. They should have long fallen to winter’s bite, but they persisted in the sunniest corner. Cullen stood over me, not quite crowding into my and the flowers’ space. I could tell something was wearing on him a bit more than usual that morning. The tightness around his eyes would ordinarily have had me reaching for him with healing, but there was a hardness to his amber gaze that hinted at his need for conflict.

He hadn’t realized yet why he picked fights with me. He was so careful with others when his temper rode high on a crest of pain and frustration. But not with me. Me he poked at verbally until his wounds lay bare and angry and he could apologize earnestly for them. Sometimes I dragged him out to the practice yard and put swords and shields in our hands. It took him less time to count his steps when he thought he might physically hurt me.

As if bruises bothered me anything like watching him inflict such heartache on himself.

“I kneel,” I confirmed without rising.

His shadow fell across me as the sun finally crept above the battlements.

“In the dirt.”

I heard it then. Beneath the scathing lay the fear that he would never be rid of the taint that clung to him. I nodded. And some perverse defiance kept me on the ground rather than letting me leap to my feet for the challenge he needed.

“In the dirt,” I said softly. “Amid the flowers. Beneath the trees. And before my love.”

I stared down at my hands. I had told him what blood stained them, and just last night I had told him–again–that I did not carry remorse for that blood. The winter’s worries were wearing upon him, and he felt his own guilt more keenly beneath his burdens. We were too rapidly approaching a path we could not walk together. If he feared the light and the burden of forgiveness then he would lose me. I could not stay in the shadows with him. Not forever.

I clasped my fingers together in my lap to keep my yearning hands from reaching for him. Maker’s breath, I loved him, and if I could have sacrificed myself on that altar to save him from himself, I would have. I could feel the weight of his gaze heavy on the back of my neck. His fingertips brushed against the crown of my head, benediction tangled with rage.

I looked up slowly, giving him time to pull away. His hand hovered, a breath from my cheek, but he didn’t touch me. I didn’t know what he saw in my eyes, but I saw the power I held over him in my supplication. I smiled. That was the great lie, then, wasn’t it? That the petitioner knelt, broken and vulnerable beneath the Maker’s gaze.

No wonder I thought, breath catching in my throat as he looked back at me. No wonder I was so terrible at their prayers.

I did not need that place of power, that last grasp of control. I did not need my god to stand above me on a pedestal that I could easily destroy.

“Essa…” Cullen’s anger fled with startling quickness, I heard useless regret take its place.

Even as he began to kneel before me, I rose.

“No.” I caught his arms before his knees could crush the grace before him.  

“No more of that,” I ordered as gently as I could.

We stood in the garden as the sun rose, and I held his hands.

“You asked me once how I could bear the weight of my choice. I don’t. Every choice that I have made is because of who I am, and I decided long ago that I would be someone who could look the Maker in the face. To take what praise or punishment he saw fit. There is no safety there. No promise of forgiveness if only I’m sorry enough for my crimes. Kneeling rarely suits me, Cullen. There’s too much blighted arrogance in it. As if remorse could buy absolution. If you want to bare your soul to the Maker and be cleansed of what you carry, stand before him and forgive yourself.”

“Heretic,” he murmured when I had finished.

All that remained in his voice was affection. I smiled.

“Every damn day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [pov shift, Cullen. Third person]
> 
> She was kneeling in the garden, head bowed over a bed of Andraste’s Grace. The petals of the flowers shown like dawn for all that the sky was dark and the sun was still an assurance beneath the jagged walls of the mountains. He had never seen her pray, and he was still shocked to find that disconcerted him. Essa spoke often and easily of the Maker, as if they were old comrades-in-arms rather than creator and worshipper. Most of the time he met the blasphemy with faint amusement, but there were days when her refusal to face the weight of her transgressions made his so much heavier.
> 
> “So you do kneel to pray.”
> 
> He did not keep the accusation from his words. The sight of her on her knees, softly turned earth staining the legs of yet another pair of breeches, made him furious.
> 
> “In the dirt,” he said, nostrils flaring slightly in derision.
> 
> He needed her fire, that special rage he knew she held for and against him.
> 
> “In the dirt,” she all but whispered in reply. “Amid the flowers. Beneath the trees. And before my love.”
> 
> Her hands were clasped gently in her lap. She gazed at them, refusing to meet the anger in his eyes. He wondered why she could not tell him the secret for not seeing them covered in blood and pain. There were nights that he woke still feeling the sticky warmth seeping between his fingers. He stared down at her, as if the weight of his regard could somehow cow such a spirit.
> 
> As if he wanted it to.
> 
> He wondered what could break her. He was afraid to touch her with such darkness in his heart. Her hair fell forward, brown locks shadowing her face. His fingertips brushed the crown of her head, and he offered a broken prayer that none of them ever found out. Surely the world could not bear such hate.
> 
> When she lifted her face, he nearly turned from her. He saw himself tangled in the love that stormed through her eyes and he feared he deserved neither the glory of it nor the punishment. To surrender to Essa would be to stand defenseless before the Maker.
> 
> Scour me clean, he wanted to beg. But she would only tell him that she couldn’t. That only he could lay down what he carried.
> 
> And Cullen did not think he was ready.


	5. Fifth Day of Haring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NEW PIECE. Cari and Krem at the templar stronghold of Clifton. Birthdays, friendship, fluff, something more?

The main hall at Clifton was filled with song, templar voices raised high amid thunderous applause. It was the liveliest Krem had ever seen them, but down to the last, every man, woman, or child who had wintered at Clifton was crowded into the keep, elbow to elbow and hip to hip, crammed together on the benches that flanked each of the long dining tables. Tankards were raised with the same celebration, ale and cider and wine splashing onto table tops and spilling over hands in celebration of the beautifully blushing woman who stood gaping beside him.

“Happy birthday, my lady.”

He didn’t know when he had picked the honorific back up or why she no longer insisted he call her by her name, but the words had become an endearment, something as warm and wistful as when Blackwall spoke of the Lady Ambassador and Krem spoke them as often as he could, each utterance a declaration. He wondered if she heard everything he did not say, could never decide if he hoped she did or prayed she didn’t.

“I can’t—I—“ Cari glanced helplessly around the room, hands clasped tightly before her, fingers worrying at the worn velvet of her dress cuffs.  “All of this for me?”

She shook her head once, sharp enough to cast the question away before he could answer. Krem knew that she had thought to pass her birthday quietly, but Sera and Essa would have none of it and so word had come from Skyhold to Ser Barris, trickled down in secret among the people who loved her. Sera had snuck in the night before just ahead of another nasty snow, but the weather would not keep her from bringing apricots and sugared violets from Jader. Lonne had baked a cake fit for a royal wedding, smooth white buttercream and candied fruit and flowers spilling from graduated tiers like a mythical palace of plenty. There were small candles around the base, just enough to illuminate the intricate work, but not enough that anyone else would see the tears shimmering amid the surprise in Cari’s eyes.

“Well, of course it is.” Lonne leaned toward her, dropped a fond kiss on Cari’s cheek as the top tier of the cake wobbled and the entire hall gasped.

She mustered a smile for the cook, and one for Delrin, as the two men held tight to the edges of the cake stand. Krem could only imagine how much the thing weighed. It was large enough to feed them all, and after everything that the Order had suffered and accomplished in the last year, they deserved the indulgence, no matter how it might tax their resources. That they had chosen to honor Cari with what little they had was not lost on her. Nor could it possibly be more deserved.

“Enough of that,” Sera admonished cheerfully, not failing to notice how Cari struggled to keep her breath even. She came to her rescue, clearing a wide spot on the table for the cake. “You’ll have her wearing it, and she isn’t the kind to let us eat cake off her.”

“Who would?” Cari asked, so innocently Krem could only smile. “Is that even…?”

“Right, well.” Sera giggled. “You have to know where to look. But there’s taverns where you can eat just about anything off of just about anyone.” She shrugged, finished off Krem’s ale without asking. “There was this one–” she began.

Krem cleared his throat and Sera broke off agreeably enough with a grinning “What?”

Cari’s cheeks were crimson, and Ser Barris looked like he might swallow his tongue.

Lonne, an impish smirk in his blue eyes, took pity on all of them. “Make a wish.”

He nodded toward the candles as the birthday song wound to a close, but Cari could only shake her head, firelight glinting in the careful coils of her hair.

“I can’t imagine a blessing greater than those I’ve found this past year,” she said, so softly and earnestly that she had to repeat herself, raising her voice enough that she might be heard. “My wishes now are for Clifton and Skyhold, I am so grateful for you all.”

“As we are for you,” Delrin assured her, the platitude issued with an ease of sincerity and friendship that Krem envied.

Cari’s hands shook slightly as she took the long, wide knife from Lonne and made the first cut amid raucous cheers. She gasped once, a little “oh” of delight that circled tight around his heart when Cari saw the dark golden compote between the subtly spiced layers of pale cake.

“Apricots?” she asked, eyes wide with wonder.

“Your favorites, yeah?” Sera asked as Lonne finished the cut and handed Cari the first piece on a smooth wooden saucer. Bright yellow and blue flowers curled with dark green vines around the perimeter.

Cari’s hands still shook, a fine tremble as she stared down at the plate.

“From Rena,” Lonne said with a grin. “For you. Painted it herself.”

Down the table, Lonne’s eldest daughter–a child no more than eight if she was a day–watched expectantly for Cari’s reaction. Cari’s lips moved, silent as prayers. She bit her her lip then tried again, but no sound emerged beyond the radiant fullness of her face. That gladness made Krem’s chest ache, but beneath that irrefutable joy was something else entirely. A pain he knew too well, and his empathy made him angry, brought his temper forward, a hot, gnawing thing that had no place here tonight. With every part of him that loved her, Krem could only hate the people who had taught her that she was unworthy, that she did not deserve the love with which she was now surrounded.

Krem watched a tear roll down Cari’s cheek; Rena’s face crinkled in concern.

“She said it’s beautiful,” he called quickly, not realizing he had taken a step closer to Cari until her sigh warmed his cheek. He covered her hands with his, steadying her grip before it failed her.

Rena glanced to Cari for confirmation and Cari nodded, fighting tears valiantly, closer to falling apart than Krem had ever seen her.

“Don’t do that,” Krem said, reaching to break off a small bit of cake. “Here, take a bite.  Everyone can cheer you again and we can all have a taste.”

A smile broke through the stormclouds in her eyes, drifted down to curve, pale and tremulous, over rose-colored lips. There were indentations from her teeth in the full bottom bow, the tip of her tongue darted out as Krem lifted the bite of cake to her mouth.

“Thank you,” Cari whispered. The quiver of her lower lip brushed his thumb, a touch like gossamer, too easily mistaken for more or less than what he knew it had to be.


	6. Walk of Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because the entire winter is not filled with relationship angst. There's also some serious cuteness.
> 
> A drunk kiss prompt from tumblr. This falls after the infamous wicked grace game where poor Cullen thinks that knowing Josephine's tells is the key to beating her. :)

“Sera is going to be so disappointed that she missed this,” Essa laughed.

Cullen stood, one foot just brushing the patch of moonlight that fell between them through the open door.  He could protect his modesty at least, if not his pride. Josephine, it seemed, owned that now.

“Purple’s a good color for you,” she added, eyes dragging in a slow tease up from the scarf he had scavenged from among Sera’s hoard to wrap around his waist. “Though I’m not sure that’s going to get you any less grief on your walk of shame.”

Walk of shame indeed.

“I’m not walking across the keep wearing this.” He didn’t spare the woefully sparse scrap of nearly transparent silk a glance.

“So you were just waiting here to tantalize me with your manly bits in violet chiffon?” Essa leaned somewhat crookedly in the doorway, eyes narrowed thoughtfully as they roamed his mostly bare body in frank appraisal. “I didn’t think we were the types.”

They were, most certainly, not the types, and he refused to dignify “manly bits” with a response. He could see a giggle bubbling up behind Essa’s lips, wondered just how long she could contain her mirth. It was obvious that she was trying, but the extra bottle of red she and Bull had toasted dragons with wasn’t helping her any. Cullen rolled his eyes to the ceiling and prayed for patience or deliverance. Or at the least that she wouldn’t be too unreasonable.

“I need you to go get me something to wear.”

“What’s in it for me?” She folded her arms across her chest and leered at him.

Unreasonable it was, he thought, hiding a grin that she would only take as a sign of her triumph.

“Nothing of that sort, Trevelyan, you’ve had more to drink tonight than you think.”

She caught the tone and snickered. “Certainly not so much that you need worry about my faculties, Commander.”

Ever since the night he’d had to dunk her in a water trough, Essa had been careful not to over-indulge, but if any night had warranted excessive merry-making it had been this one, and Cullen was grateful. 

“You don’t have to be in your cups for me to worry about your faculties.” He gave up, released his hold on a helpless laugh. “Come here.”

She lurched upright, stalked toward him with a stumble that had her scowling. “I might be a little drunk,” she admitted gamely. “Doesn’t mean we aren’t haggling.”

She tripped on the edge of Sera’s rug and pitched forward. Cullen caught her arms as she landed hard against him. “You did that on purpose,” he accused.

She snuggled close, cheek against the beat of his heart, hands stroking up his back.  “Are you accusing me of subterfuge?” Her fingers teased the ends of his hair.

“Never.”

Cullen wrapped both arms around her, rested his chin atop her head, and simply held her, a warm shield against the night’s chill. The threat of discovery had eased now that he had made it into Sera’s refuge. He would face the humiliation of his defeat tomorrow; hopefully Josie would be gracious enough to return his armor to him discreetly. Tonight it was enough to stand nearly naked in a tavern holding love and laughter in his arms.

“What would you have?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her temple.

Essa’s lips blazed a lazy, familiar trail across his chest. “For getting me something to wear,” he felt the need to clarify.

She hummed thoughtfully, hands stroking, warm and light, a gentle rasp of well-worn leather across exposed skin. “A kiss,” she decided, tipping her face up to his.

“A kiss.” He couldn’t quite check his skepticism. He had been prepared for her to press her advantage more. “And then you’ll go get me some clothes.”

“A kiss,” she countered, hands moving again in blatant temptation. “And maybe you won’t need clothes for a bit.”

Cullen groaned. There were at least half a dozen reasons that he shouldn’t have responded to the smoke in her gaze or the coaxing in her hands. He was cold, naked, Sera would eventually wake up and trudge upstairs. The last thing they needed was her shouting down the tavern at finding him naked. Alone. With Essa.

She waggled her brows at him and Cullen chuckled. “This is Sera’s room,” he reminded her in a whisper. “A kiss is all you’re getting.”

He brushed his fingers beneath her chin and stroked his thumb along the curve of her jaw until her eyes slipped shut and she swayed more heavily against him. He lowered his mouth to hers, the tip of his tongue sweeping across her lower lip. She tasted of honeyed wine and mischief. Warm hands wandered down his back, dipping beneath the haphazardly wrapped scarf, raising gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

“Maybe two.”


	7. Eve of First Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cari and Krem get a bit closer to telling each other how they feel. Completely unrelated, Essa tries to send Cari away in fear of the coming battles. Lots of stuff in here. fluff, angst, plot.

_Clifton_

There wasn’t always a yard of shin deep snow at Clifton. The Hinterlands did not languish in perpetual winter drear; the air rose and fell above freezing with regularity and the roads were as often clear as not. There was a regular stream of visitors and workers to the growing keep, it surprised Cari, but then, she knew little of snow and certainly nothing of the great drifts of the stuff shoveled and scraped off of walks, left in large dirty piles that never melted completely.

Krem and Sera did not spend the entire season at Clifton. There were weeks that Sera rambled to Jader, then farther, back to Halamshiral and Val Royeaux collecting information from the jennies and bringing Cari trinkets from the road. Still other weeks when some of the Chargers wandered in and Krem wandered back out, gaze turned over his shoulder even as he lifted his voice with the cheerful clatter of his boisterous family.

Cari missed them. They had slipped too easily into something that resembled their routine at Skyhold, spending mornings together attacking the work of the chapel rather that her combat training. They still managed a bit of time for that as well, generally late at night and in secret, Cari and Sera moving like ghosts through the empty sanctuary, nothing but their breaths and muffled laughter to bounce off of the stones.

Krem would sit on the steps leading to the altar, a wine skin and whatever they had managed to scrounge for a midnight snack tucked into a basket beside him. Last time he had come back from Redcliffe he had brought raisins and walnuts, a little jar of summer fruit jam. With his spoils, they had feasted on day old bread that Cari had helped make herself, and Sera had taught them both a new song she had heard in a roadside tavern, a coarse tune Cari would never admit to knowing—or loving—word for bawdy word.

She hummed it now as she sat down at her desk, the latest letter from Essa spread across the blotter. Cari had moved out of her small room off of the kitchen into one just as small and without a window, a tiny space that would one day be just a storeroom for altar candles and parchment. She didn’t mind. There was plenty of light just outside her door, winter sun glinting through the stained glass windows. Sera had brought her a small magelight from her last trip to Orlais. The crystal glowed, dawn writ small enough for the palm of her hand. She suspected that it was stolen, and that the dubious origins of the gift did not worry her was something of a wonder.

Perhaps it was good that she had not let her guilt badger her into returning to Ostwick. The shock of her becoming this new creature…this wild and free spirit…would surely break her mother’s heart.

 

_Cari,_

_I wanted to come see you for First Day, but the passes are thick with ice again and Cassandra had something of a fit the last time I tried to melt my way down. I don’t know what the point is of being one of most volatile fire mages in recent history if I can’t use my flames for useful things like clearing roads, but I suppose it’s just as well. Things here are not festive. The new year turns all our thoughts to war and I know that I am not easy to live with. My skin feels too tight, and there is a pall on the back of my neck weighted with too many coming deaths. Would that my own would suffice and spare us what is to come. I am not meant to inspire armies, to send legions to break against dangers so great._

_The yard is filled with their voices. I know it is the same for you. Winter may shorten the constant drills, but it has not relieved any of their duties. Some mornings I cannot tell their shouts from those in my head. The anchor…it is no longer as quiet as it has been._

_But those are worries for the future, when our enemies are long gone to dust and ash. We have worries aplenty now and my purpose in writing you was not to share them so much as to assuage some I know that you’ve carried alone._

_You are free. As you begin the new year surrounded by only some of those who love you, I want you to know that you belong to none but yourself. Cullen told me of your mother’s petition at the Winter Palace. A bit belated as I had just received a written reprisal as eloquently tangled as any missive we might receive from Orlais. I confess that I have little patience for either, but it is done. She has been instructed not to trouble us further. All future correspondence will be directed to Ambassador Montilyet or the financial contacts we have mad in Ostwick._

There were hastily hatched marks through a line of Essa’s sharp penmanship. Cari told herself it was the waning light that blurred the words on the page before her.

_Forgive me, I take too long to come to my point and space is limited on a raven’s claw. In short, you need no longer concern yourself with what you left behind. I know that you had no intention of selling yourself into marriage, but I also know that you carried far too much guilt for daring to want a life for yourself. Those worries need not go with you into the new year._

_A trust has been set up for the Trevelyan Estate by the Inquisition. A gift wrapped in suitable enough language of gratitude that your mother can reinforce her notions of her own importance and stop writing to Ambassador Montilyet for aid in finding a suitable match for you. I wanted to write the letter myself, but Josie insisted that there were prettier ways to explain to Lady Trevelyan that her oldest daughter was of too great an importance to Andraste’s cause to be sold into marriage simply because Bann Trevelyan has yet to learn to refuse her excess. I’m sure that my letter would have been the more honest, but perhaps this will keep her quiet._

_The Trevelyan debts have been paid and there is a comfortable enough allowance for the two of them to live off of. Sister Nightingale has also made certain that Lady Trevelyan understands the importance of leaving you to your own life. Don’t ask me how. Plausible deniability and all of that._

Cari didn’t bother trying to stop her grin. Essa’s letters had always bounced back and forth between the careful formality of one who read a great deal and something almost akin to Sera’s patterns of speech. She could almost see the look of exasperation in her sister’s eyes at not being privy to whatever leverage Leliana had on Miranda Trevelyan.

_Now, do something for you. Take a chance. Run off to Jader with Sera and find a ship with no set course. Take Krem and…well I don’t actually know what the two of you would do, but I know that he will keep you safe, and I know that you’ll look after him.  Clifton will always be there for you, and so will Skyhold, but I don’t know what the spring will bring us, and Cari? I don’t want you anywhere near what is coming. Do this for me. Take your freedom while you can. Let me worry a little less about my life’s greatest treasures._

_I love you._

_Essa_

 

Cari’s hand was shaking as she dipped her quill into ink.

_Ester Donya Trevelyan,_

_Have you lost your blighted mind?_

*

The night was fire-bright when Krem returned from Redcliffe. The flames of a half dozen bonfires climbed toward the stars along with a chorus of joyous voices, cheerful pipes, and strumming lutes. Cari was dancing in the courtyard, her face serene as Delrin led her through a waltz no less elegant for the simple steps Krem could see the man still counting in his head. The man’s bearing was something of an inspiration, all clean, strong lines and perfect profile. They made a beautiful picture, the glow of the fires throwing their silhouettes large and in triplicate, spinning across the keep’s walls. He couldn’t help but find it fitting; there were perhaps as many Caris as her shadows, and he loved them all.

Cari who forgot to smile because she was still too accustomed to not having reasons for it, who had learned to laugh with him and Sera, whose mirth still cracked, jagged and aching, from lack of practice.  Cari who read people like a nightingale, whose clever mind worked out the faults, the strengths, the weaknesses of those around her, but who too-often forgot to turn her gaze on her own looking glass. Cari who danced the way she fought, with the sharp grace of distant lightning, a web of brilliance cast soft by heavy clouds and a far horizon.

“You ever gonna tell her?”

Sera’s query was uncommonly subdued. She slipped out of the shadows, startling Krem as she joined him at one of the smaller fires. He wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there, staring through the flames. Long enough that his eyes were burning and that he could blame the tightness in his chest on the smoke he was breathing.

“Nothing to tell.”

“Bullshit.” Her face scrunched up, and for a moment he thought she would argue with him. As if Krem didn’t go rounds with himself a hundred times a day. “You get a letter from Es too?”

He nodded. “Chief met me in Redcliffe. You?”

“Harding found me on the road. Always knows where I am that one. She’s clever.” Sera grunted. “Maybe too clever.”

She slipped her arm in the crook of his elbow. The fire popped and Krem watched embers float, wisps of grey with hearts aflame, toward the clear deep of the heavens. The stars glittered down through the cold and the templars and villagers sang of love lost and found in the turning of a day.

“She’s not going to like it,” Sera added, jerking her chin toward Cari.

She was laughing now, the layers of her best skirts a gradated fall of lavender to violet to ebony satin as she pulled them up from her fleet kicking feet. The waltz had ended and Delrin was tugging her into something that might one day resemble a sailor’s jig.

“She already doesn’t like it,” Krem murmured. “Laughter isn’t reaching her eyes. I can’t imagine Delrin has done anything to upset her. Poor bastard loves her almost as much as we do.”

“He wishes.” Sera blew a raspberry into the air, but Krem knew she didn’t mean it. She might be a bit possessive about those she claimed, but she liked Delrin well enough for “a jackboot.” That she called him such was more compliment than the templar knew.

Krem watched as someone pressed a cup into Cari’s hand calling good health and wishes for the coming year. She toasted them gladly, but she flinched when hands grabbed too exuberantly at hers, when a kiss unasked for was smacked too loudly to lips that did not want the affection. Delrin put a step between her and her worshipper, but the discomfiture was slow to leave her face.

“Well, if you won’t go get her,” Sera began, charging forward, her wiry arm still clinging to his and tugging him along with her. “I will.”

“You’ll only embarrass her.” Krem dragged his feet, slowed Sera’s fury long enough to give Cari a chance regain her composure and to spot them. Her gaze shaded cool and wary as she watched them cross the courtyard. Her smile lifted the apples of her cheeks.

“Sera! Krem! I didn’t know if you would make it back tonight!”

She welcomed them graciously, hugs and kisses—the latter for Sera—offered ungrudgingly, but Krem felt the tension in her arms even through his armor. Things hadn’t been the same between them in months. They walked too closely together or not at all. He felt the distance as keenly as its lack. He wanted too much that he did not deserve.

“Lieutenant Aclassi, Sera,” Derlin nodded a polite greeting, thanked Cari for the dances before sweeping Ser Briony from a nearby camp stool as the music turned to something less cautious. Their laughter mingled with the rough stomps and soaring cheer.

Cari’s smile almost reached her eyes before it turned back to them.

“Come on.” She caught Krem and Sera each by the arm, leading them away from the revelry. “I’m sure the two of you want to knock some of the dust from the road off before joining the festivities.”

Her fingers were sharp, grip hard enough that even through his heavily quilted gambeson, Krem could feel the bite of her nails against the pulse in his elbow as she started toward the chantry. The music and song grew quieter, the night colder at the edges of the fires.

“Was everyone well?” Cari asked, not bothering to ask who ‘everyone’ was. Like as not she already knew.

“Scout Harding sends kisses,” Sera offered with a shrug.

“I doubt those were for me,” Cari laughed, and Maker help him, the sound was home.

The sanctuary was empty, the pale limestone glowing in the light of what had to be every candle in the place, dawn called early in the Maker’s name. He and Sera followed her like Essa’s horses so often trailed her sister, without question and with too much faith. Krem found the comparison apt even as it annoyed him.

“We aren’t pets.” Krem pulled his arm away, tone uneven enough that Sera tipped her head to the side to regard him and contradict him; the gesture was very feline.

“No,” Cari replied politely, an ocean of remove in the careful tone.  “I know that you aren’t. Though one of you is young enough to be my child.”

Krem bristled.

“You’d have been pretty young.” Sera wrinkled her nose, stopping whatever retort he might have given. “But as mothers go, I’ll take you.”

Cari smiled, something faint and wistful shading her eyes. He wondered if she had ever wanted children. He wasn’t certain he could see her with a husband—or a wife—but Cari had patience in her hands. She was good with children.

“Then go on,” she smiled. “The water’s cold, but there’s plenty left from my washup this afternoon. And if you want to borrow a tunic or something, you’re welcome to. Your First Day gift is in a box on my bed.”

She gave Sera a push toward the small storage closet she had been using as a bedroom since Krem and Sera joined her at Clifton.

“The yellow bow,” she added. “The brown is for Krem. I’ll come back for it when you’re done.”

She gave Sera another poke.

“You sayin’ my clothes are dirty?” she demanded with a snicker.

“You smell,” Cari retorted, lifting her nose. “Like an Orlesian brothel.”

“Then I got my money’s worth, yeah?” She elbowed Cari with a wink. “You’re not mad then?”

Cari took a slow breath and silence laced tight into the spaces between them.

“I’m mad at Essa,” Cari said, not pretending to misunderstand Sera’s meaning as she turned away. “But we’ll talk about it later.”

“Alright, alright.” Sera stepped into Cari’s room, mouthing “tell her” to Krem as she closed the door at Cari’s back.  

“The water in your room might be frozen,” Cari began, falling back on masks of etiquette as she walked to one of the small potbellied stoves at the front of the chapel.  A practical addition, something she had added with little regard for the formal sanctity of the space. Better to have the altar warm enough for petitioners to pray, she had argued, than worry about the chapel’s grandeur.

Krem didn’t answer, didn’t follow, nor did he offer to take the kettle from her as she pulled her hands into the sleeves of her coat and lifted it from the back of the stove. The heels of her boots were unusually loud on the stone floor as she crossed the chapel to the room he and Sera used in conjunction with Clifton’s small tavern.

“I don’t need a mother,” Krem said, drawing in a breath through his nose that did nothing to calm the sudden and irrational spike of his temper. “And you’re certainly not old enough to be mine.”

*

Cari stared at him, jaw slack, eyes wide, as Krem stalked across the chapel. She could hear her mother in her head— _Close your mouth, Carilyna, you look like a peasant_ —as he opened the door before her, never once meeting her wounded gaze. “Just leave it on the floor, I’ll tend myself.”

“Krem…” She bit her lip, hovering in the darkened doorway with the hot iron kettle clutched between them. “I know that I’m not quite myself tonight, but have I done something…said something to offend you?”

She was angry with her sister, more upset than she could remember being since leaving Ostwick behind her, but she had tried to be careful of those around her. It was not their fault her sister believed her a weak, fainting thing in need of protection.

“Of course you haven’t.” His answer sounded very much as if he meant the opposite.

“I should have brought a candle,” Cari sighed. She glanced back over his shoulder toward the altar. “Would you, please?”

She waited silently while Krem retrieved a heavy taper. Her mind worked frantically back over their interactions, but from the moment she first saw him and Sera in the courtyard, Cari could think of no transgressions she might have made. She had even assured Sera that her anger was not with either of them.

“Watch your hair,” Krem said gruffly as he drew near with the candle, flame cupped behind his hand.

Cari stepped back to allow him into the small room ahead of her. His raised arms brushed her coat, elbow catching on the heavy buttons and she startled back when everything that was in her yearned toward him. It wasn’t sexual desire; she knew enough of that and her own lack from blessedly frank conversations with Essa and Josephine, even Sera. But it was passion, and she knew that too. A longing to be close to him, to be held. To belong. To find some measure of the softness and grace she tried to leave on a world too harsh, too cold. Maker, forgive her, she had never wanted anyone, anything, as she did Krem.

Not even her freedom.

She waited with breath held while Krem lit the candle on the shelf by the door, afraid that one step too close, one word too kind, and she would forget her resolve. She stared through the candlelight at the meager contents of the room. A narrow cot, blankets folded neatly at the foot, a battered trunk that he and Sera had shared until Sera’s collection of sundries became a little too unusual—and often sticky—for his taste. Cari had given him one of her own trunks to replace it, a smaller chest, sunbursts painted on the top. She should have known he felt some measure of what she did. She added that guilt to the bricks she already carried. They had moved past the point of ignorance’s kindness. She would have to tell him. She prayed for strength and found only ash.

“If you leave the door open, it’ll warm up in here soon. I’ll go stand by the front doors. You won’t be disturbed.” Cari set the kettle on the floor by a bucket of water that was definitely icy.

“You know why, right?” His brown eyes were brittle, shaded dark in the low light.

“Why…?” She blinked at him. She could imagine, but Cari was not one to put words in another’s mouth. “I’m sorry, did I miss something?”

His usual patience was missing, and she could hardly blame him. If he had been sent even a fraction of the letter she had...

“Essa,” Krem said, confirming her suspicions. “You know why--”

“Why she sent you to pack me up and cart me off?” She demanded abruptly. Anger thrummed—hot and sudden—through her words, ruining the careful cadence of her voice. “Of course, I do.”

She shrugged out of her coat, every movement coarse and betraying as she flung the heavy garment to the cot beside her. She had hoped to discuss this later, when her emotions weren’t so raw, but why not now?

“I realize that I am no warrior,” she continued, even as she cursed herself for the quaver in her voice. “But…” Cari shook her head hard. “I did not think she believed me so weak.”

She rolled the sleeves of her tunics up before bending to pick the kettle up again, avoiding his gaze with the same devotion they were supposed to seek the Maker’s. She poured the hot water over the sluggish cold before setting her teeth, plunging her hand in to stir the temperature even.

“I did not expect to be sent away.”

Krem said nothing. She could feel his gaze on the back of her head, but she didn’t have the courage to face him. She straightened slowly, wiping her wet hand on her skirts as she stared past him at the candlelight.

“I’m sorry, I should not rail at you like a fisherman’s wife.”

“I’m no fisherman.” He shook his head, as if to cast away the smile that threatened. “It’s not about you though.”

He dropped his pack to the floor, kicked it out of the way. “It’s about Essa. Not one of us would say you aren’t strong enough.”

“Then why is she trying so hard to protect me?” she demanded in frustration. “I should be—“

“As far away as she wants you to be,” Krem interrupted. “Yes, she’s trying to protect you.”

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, scraping his scalp with the metal on his gauntlets. He stepped past her, farther into the room, before yanking the gloves off and dropping them to cot beside her coat.

“It’s hard enough for her going into battle with Cullen, with Bull, Sera, Cassandra.” He listed each name on a finger, continued with the others until he ran out. “The likelihood of us all coming back…”

Krem shook his head. “There are no guarantees. We were lucky at Adamant.”

Cari covered her mouth with her hands as the truth settled like a shroud in the cold, small room. Krem’s voice echoed, quiet but heated, against the stone walls and Cari thought suddenly of sun-whispered deserts and cities of the dead.

“She’s sending Fin away too,” he continued brutally. “I don’t know where,” he added before she could ask. “But I know he’s going. First thaw. She wants you alive. Safe. Not because you’re weak, but because if only she comes back, she’ll need you. Because if only Cullen comes back, she needs to know you’ll be alive to be there for him.”

He sighed. “And because if the worst happens and we lose, Thedas will need someone out there who stands a chance to organizing a second assault. A last defense.”

“What?” Cari stared at him, disbelief etched in lines between her eyes. “How could I…?”

He reached for her, brushed his fingertips over her chin.  The touch should have passed as nothing between them, but her heart skipped sharply, her words failing.

“You’ve been the face of the Inquisition once before,” he murmured. “With the right support you could rally whatever remains, lead the world through whatever it had left.”

“Krem…?” Her breath was warm against his fingers. She could taste winter lingering on the air above his skin. Her skirts brushed the top of his boots. When had they gotten so close? Hadn’t he been annoyed with her only moments ago?

“Your hair feels like silk,” Krem whispered, his accent tangling thick around the reluctant confession. “And you always smell like…” He took a slow breath. “Those lavender roses...Do you remember the ones? They were selling them the day I met you in Jader. Wagons of them. Supposed to be thornless.”

He chuckled quietly. “Fewer maybe, but they have thorns.” A lock of hair had escaped her pins; he tucked it behind her ear, the pad of his thumb stroking down the curve. “I wanted to buy you one then.”

“Krem.”

He ignored her, not that she could blame him. A thousand words she had to give him and none would come. His fingers slid into her hair, nails scraping lightly against her scalp and Cari’s eyes closed at the simple, easy pleasure. She leaned into his touch, just as she had done on her birthday, and just like that night she called herself every kind of fool. She had to tell him, she thought frantically. Before he made the mistake of thinking--

“I don’t know what they’re called.” His breath was on her cheek now, and Cari wanted to weep, wanted to turn her lips to his and see if the kiss would be as sweet as she had too often imagined. “But they’re softer scented than the others. Like they’re caught beneath frost.”

The bells rang out before she could reply, not that Cari could have thought of one. He deserved to know the truth, that she was not enough, could never be what he deserved, but the words clung to her tongue like poison and the bells clamored above the chantry, a loud cacophony joined by hundreds of cheering voices welcoming in the new year.

“Joyous First Day!” Sera yelled from the sanctuary. “If you don’t kiss her, I will.”


	8. Joyous First Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part two of Eve of First Day. Cari and Krem, because Sera. <3 
> 
> Fluff, but maybe some tears. I at least shed tears. :D

“If you don’t kiss her,” Sera shouted cheerfully across the quiet chantry sanctuary. “I will.”

The midnight bells of Clifton were a riotous knell, tolling with a fierce, clamoring exaltation of the new year.  Krem could feel each peal like thunder, the sound reverberating through the stones around them to lodge somewhere in the vicinity of his pounding heart.  Cari’s eyes were wide, if there had been less uncertainty in them, her stare might have reminded him too much of her sister, but even at her most volatile Essa never seemed so fragile as Cari did now.

“You understand…” He was still cupping her cheek, fingers burrowing into the silk of her hair. Her breath was short against his wrist. “I would never hurt you.”

“But I could hurt you.” There were tears in her eyes and she licked her lips, the nervous gesture drawing his gaze. “I’m too old for you.”

“That’s nonsense,” he said, conviction settling hollow in his belly. “And you know it.” He let her go, turned away so that she couldn’t watch his heart break in his eyes. “But I get it.”

It was a justification she could live with stating. They both knew the real reason why, and he couldn’t blame her. He had been foolish to hope.

“Oi! ” Sera screeched from the door. “You two!”

Krem spun back, watched as she spread her narrow limbs to take up as much space as she could before stomping her feet, an exasperated groan as loud as the dwindling bells.

“You’re an idiot!” Sera shouted, glaring at Krem. “She doesn’t care a thing about that–” She waved a hand at him that might have been insulting had it come from anyone else. Instead, Krem felt strangely comforted. “Beyond how you feel and who you are.”

“Sera!” Cari’s admonishment would have quailed the most recalcitrant Charger, but not Sera. Her blue eyes were narrowed, an impressive scowl scrunching her face.

“Don’t you ‘Sera!’ me,” she snapped, turning her ire to Cari. “And you, so worried about not being good enough for him that you fail to see he loves you.”

“Sera!” Krem’s bark twined with Cari’s gasp. Neither looked at the other.

“Shut it, both of you,” Sera folded her arms, chest bowed up in annoyance. “I let Cully-Wully and Es blunder around because I knew they’d get to it eventually. Not ones to suffer long if there’s work to be done for it. But you two!” She threw her hands in the air, knuckles rapping hard on the open door. “Worrying about being enough for each other when you’re frigging perfect.”

She pointed a finger at the both of them, sharp as an arrow. Krem glanced at Cari, saw that she was as struck mute as he was.

“Talk,” Sera ordered. “Or I’ll talk for you, and you can be pissed at me.” She wrinkled her nose at them both. “Arses.”

They watched her stomp away and silence spooled, a delicate thread they were both afraid to break.

“How could you think—?” Krem began only to cut off by the last words he expected to hear.

“I don’t like sex!” The admission burst from her, high and shaky. Cari clapped her hands over her mouth, stared at him over her fingers.

“What?” He could only blink at her. Krem reached up to rub his eyes. “I don’t recall demanding sex from you.”

Her blush was fiery and immediate. He watched her cheeks darken, the blood spreading down into her neck and up into her ears. He’d wager her scalp was red too.

“I—“ Cari dropped her hands and glared at him. “It’s what people do.”

She clasped her hands together in front of her, but not before he saw that they were trembling.

“And why in Andraste’s name would you think you weren’t good enough for me?” she demanded before he could reply.  Cari did not swear often and Krem smiled. He preferred the flash of righteous indignation in her eyes to the hurt and the fear.

“I’m not a—“

“If you finish that sentence I will punch you,” Cari whispered furiously. “And you should know I’m good for it. If I have ever made you feel as if I think you aren’t every bit enough as you are, then I hope you will forgive me. And leave me.”

Her voice broke on the last.

“You have overcome so much to find yourself among those who love and support you. To find a family.” How she didn’t realize that she spoke just as much of herself, Krem didn’t know. He took a step toward her, but she fell back, hands raised between them. “I would be happy to count myself among them,” Cari continued earnestly. “But if I make you feel…”

Her shoulders shook the words away.

“Maker, forgive me, Krem, I love you.” She lifted her chin, and the tears that had been standing like diamond sentinels in her eyes, fell along with the last of her defenses. “I love you so much that my heart aches with it. Every time you ride away I feel like I’m being pulled apart. Like I’m not all here until you return.”

“Come here.” She shook her head, and he was afraid to reach for her, afraid that he would shake apart if he didn’t keep his arms tight by his sides, fingers in fists, clinging to nothing more than a moment he had never dared hope for. “Please.”

She took a single step toward him before she stopped. “I am too old for you,” she said, because it no longer mattered. “I wasn’t being dishonest.”

Krem laughed. “Life experience trumps seasons, my lady.”

She smiled then. “I know.” She took another step. “But the sex thing…” Her face was still flaming, and she still wouldn’t quite meet his gaze. “I’m…not…I don’t have those wants,” she said finally, staring down at the floor.  She worried the toe of her boot against the seam of two stones. “It’s taken me a long time—and some harrowing conversations with my sister, I might add—to understand that I’m just different than a lot of people.”

“I hope Essa isn’t your standard for normal,” Krem interjected.

Cari giggled, and when he reached to brush the tears from her cheeks, she didn’t pull away.

“No, of course not, but she’s very candid. She makes it easier to talk about such things. I know myself, Krem. I just…” she shrugged helplessly, but she took another step closer, until her skirts were pressed against his legs and the toes of her boots slid between his. “I don’t know what it means for me and another. I never dared to hope for me and another.”

“No,” he said, roughly. “Of course you didn’t. But you’ve found it anyway, my lady. If you will have me.”

“But…”

“No, buts,” he said, brushing his lips over her cheek, gathering salt from the sweetness of her skin. “We’ll figure it out. If all I ever do is kiss you like this, hold your hand, wake beside you each morning…”

She blushed, but the smile that shimmered tear-bright in her eyes was not from embarrassment.

“I will consider myself a lucky man.”

“I like kissing,” she whispered, as if she confessed some great shock.

“See, we’re already figuring things out.” He lifted her chin with two fingers, searched her gaze. “May I?”

They were close enough in height, especially in the heels she liked to wear. Cari surprised him, rising up on her toes, destroying the final distance between them with eyes determined and lips tender. The kiss was warm, soft, and she lingered over it, questions pressed to his mouth until he could only answer with a sigh, lips yielding as hope settled—a fledgling, fearful creature no more—between them. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she pulled herself tight against him, until there was nothing but the scents of roses and hearth fire, and the sound of tomorrow.

Krem kissed her back, slid his arms slow and careful around her until her body softened further into his embrace. He could feel her heart beating, hard against his open palm as he ran his hands over her back.

“Is this alright?”

She nodded, lips bumping against his chin. “Better than alright.” She turned to place a light a kiss on his cheek. “You…”

She let out a great breath, and later, he thought, later they would sort out every fear that still clung to them.

“You feel like home to me,” Cari said. “And I am so afraid of losing you.”

“You won’t,” he punctuated his vow with another kiss, this one on the trembling apple of her cheek. “The kissing never has to go anywhere. You know that, right?”

She nodded, and he kissed her again, simply because he could, because after all this time she was in his arms and seemed in no hurry to leave. She kissed him back, gladness gilding the curves of her lips.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, I’m certain.” He drew back, gathered her gaze as he had caught fireflies in his youth, careful, steady. Hesitance only bruised. “I found out a long time ago that my body isn’t me, and it’s not my body that longs for you. It’s everything that I am.” He took her hand, placed it over his heart, watched her fingers splay wide across his armor. “I love you, and I don’t want to ride away from you again.” He kissed her gently. “I’d also really like it, if you would stop crying when I kiss you.”

Cari laughed, popped him on the shoulder. “Joyous First Day, Krem.”

She kissed him twice, soundly, one buss on each cheek and he lost himself in the wonder of her, found himself again in the reflections in her eyes.

“Joyous First Day,” he breathed.

“Yeah it is!” Sera crowed gleefully from the door.

Krem groaned, and Cari buried her face against his chest. “I’m afraid we’re stuck with her.” Cari’s voice echoed off of plate, and he nestled his chin in her hair, snugging her closer.

“Too right,” Sera squealed, rushing into the small room to wrap them both in her arms. She dropped a kiss on the side of Cari’s head, managed something loud and smacking in the vicinity of Krem’s jaw. “But I’m not calling you Dad.”

“Too right,” Krem said.


	9. Wintermarch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NEW PIECE. War looms with the hope of spring and tensions around Skyhold are high. Essa seeks solitude in the small valley beneath Skyhold. Cullen braves the cold.

She should take a lesson from the river. The water moved without ceasing, and without hurrying. She was surprised to find it moving at all given the cold and the altitude, but beneath the thick layer of ice she could see the river sliding, sluggish but determined, in its course toward the sea. Winter passed just as slowly, and blood and death would come with the spring, but even as Essa hoarded each day and night with Cullen and her friends, the Frostbacks were not kind to the restless ache of her soul.

The magic in Skyhold’s stones was not enough to keep her content forever. Though she had felt the promise of home moment she arrived, dragging herself before a weary band of refugees, following Solas as if she trusted him. Not that she hadn’t trusted him at that point, but she was mabari enough to know when someone couldn’t trust themselves; she tended to extend a person the same courtesy, and so far the habit had served her well.

It was different with Cullen.

There were some days when he didn’t trust himself. She felt it keenly in the way he touched her, hands cautious and gentler than she needed; in the way he kissed her, lips filled with apologies he would always owe to his ghosts. Lately there had been more of those days than not, and some when the spirits that haunted him found themselves facing her own.

Essa’s demons didn’t give ground nearly so quickly, and she felt trapped in a cage of her own making. She could not leave Cullen to face them alone, but she couldn’t always stay. Today had been one of those days.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” she said, lifting her face to the scents of elderflower and oakmoss that teased forward on a blistering wind. “It’s too cold for you.”

Too cold for her too, but she had been warmed by rage when she slip-slid down the mountain side.

“It’s too cold for anyone down here,” Cullen replied, voice low, though whether with anger or regret, she didn’t yet know.  Snow crunched beneath his boots. “I’m to understand that I have a fire mage—“

But he stumbled over “have,” couldn’t quite finish the teasing deflection, and Essa cringed. The hardest part of the worst days was Cullen not believing he deserved her. She stared at the frozen river, waited for him to draw close enough that she could smell the fainter hints of parchment and ink and—

No weapon oil, no sharp edge of steel.

She stood up too quickly, bare feet hissing steam into the air as they touched a patch of snow. He stood before her unarmed and without armor, but his gaze was steadier than when she left him in the war room.

“Andraste’s mabari, Cullen, you must be freezing!”

He was wrapped in so many layers she could scarce make out the shape of his body, but his face, what of it remained visible above his scarf and below his hat, was bright red with cold. He smiled—foolish man that he sometimes was—and though she could not see his lips, his eyes crinkled at the corners, amber gleaming dark as alfalfa honey, the work of bees glutted on summer’s thick, sweet promises.

Maker, she prayed, unapologetically selfish. Let them both see the waning of that glorious season, with their enemies long behind them and hay drying golden in the fields.

“I didn’t want to wait for you,” Cullen said, the impatience out of character and honestly charming. “I hoped we were through fighting.”

Essa smiled, tugged off her gloves with a brow lift of askance. He nodded, and she placed warm hands on his cheeks, burrowing her fingers beneath his scarf to scratch through the thick of his scruff. Most every other man at Skyhold had a thick beard between his face and the mountain winter. Not Cullen. That would be unprofessional.

“Are we?” she asked. He only ever fought himself, but she was willing enough to shadow box when he needed it. The weight of his duties, the weight of his past…some days she made them easier for him to carry.

She knew that some days she made it worse.

“We are.” He wrapped his arms around her, a hum of pleasure echoing faintly through the thick winter garb as he closed his eyes, leaned forward enough to press his forehead to hers. “That’s really nice.”

“We should go back then,” she murmured, pecking a kiss to the bridge of his nose.

Cullen’s eyes flashed open and Essa pulled back, bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I—“

“Don’t be.” He shoved roughly at the wrap of crimson wool that obscured his face. “I was just waiting—“

Whatever else he might have said was lost as he pulled her up against him, kissed her with such fury of devotion that she could only hang in his embrace, lips soft beneath his, teeth and tongue answering each inquest of his with tender mercy. Essa held fast to his face, slowed passion to a breath she might catch before she sucked his lower lip into her mouth, worried the cold flesh between her teeth until he groaned.

“We should get back,” she whispered between kisses. “Spend the rest of the night in front of the fire.”

“Yes.” Cullen kissed her again, slow, but without hesitance, without the regret that so often shaded his desires after such a day as this one.

Essa wound his scarf back into place, dropped back to the ground she had cleared of snow. “Just let me get my boots.”

“You wore shoes?” he asked in surprise.

“Even I would lose a foot to this cold, “ Essa laughed. She jogged back to the riverbank. “I was just cooling off a little.”

She glanced down at her feet before shoving them into her boots with a wave of healing to dull the sting. Cullen held out one gloved hand and she slipped her fingers between his, laced them tight together like the leather on a sword’s grip. 

“Let’s go home.”


	10. Sex Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some post-coital silliness. One of my favorite prompts from tumblr because while it is silly, it shows just how many hurdles these two have crossed together and well, I'm proud of them. :) nsfwish?

“We. Are. Sex. Gods,” Essa declared definitively as she rolled away to collapse, sweaty and panting on the floor beside him. She waved one hand toward the stars that peered down through his roof. “You hear that? Sex gods. Rawr.”

“You did _not_ just call us sex gods,” he said, attempting to sound disapproving. He was almost certain the words came out on a whimper.

“I have told you more than once, Rutherford,” Essa gasped out between great gulps of air. “If my mouth is saying something you don’t like, you’d better find a way to occupy it.”

He rolled toward her challenge, caught her face between his hands, and gave her a kiss more clumsy than scorching.

“I can’t,” he said, falling back to hard planks made comfortable by exhaustion. “You have ruined me, woman.”

She giggled and the sound bounced bold and joyful to chase away the hallowed solemnity of the night.

“I am not moving from this spot,” he continued, as if issuing some great decree. “And I’m going to be very upset if you can walk tomorrow.”

“What is this ‘walk’?” Essa asked, not bothering to cover her jaw-cracking yawn. “Maker’s breath, Cullen, I think I’m dying. I can’t feel my feet.”

Cullen laughed, the sound loud and unfettered. “We need pillows.”

She passed him her shirt. “Real pillows,” he corrected.

“I can’t reach them,” she complained in defeat. “Oh! Wait!”

He waited, staring up at the sky through the fine, clear barrier that stretched between the haphazard patches of his ceiling. A bundle of fur hit him in the chest.

“Perfect,” he muttered in feigned seriousness. “If we expire, they’ll find us naked in the floor of my loft with only my surcoat to protect our modesty.”

Essa chortled. “Put it under your head so you don’t wake up with a stiff neck. There’s no modesty here to protect and you know it.”

He smirked and followed her instruction. She scooted over enough to share the makeshift pillow, body still angled away from him and cooling.  

“By the mabari!” Her swear slid into a groan. “I drooled in my hair.”

He almost choked, laughter turning to painful guffaws.

“Did you really? When?”

“Yes,” she answered indignantly. “And I’m not sure. Because positions.”

“Do not start quoting Sera.” Cullen commanded. He flailed back an arm, managed to grab the edge of his blanket and pull it down from the bed.

“Can’t sleep on the floor,” Essa argued, words already slowing with weight as sleep tugged with insistent hands. “You’ll be sore tomorrow.”

“We’re already going to be sore tomorrow,” he pointed out, running one hand lightly over her hip.

She shuddered, and one foot flailed, kicking the bottom of the footboard. “Ow. Dammit.”

Cullen chuckled and half-heartedly tossed the blanket over them.

“You can’t sleep down here,” Essa repeatedly blearily, shoving the edge of the blanket back off of her with a slurred: “Too hot.”

“You do all the time,” he countered.

“I’m used to it,” she mumbled. The words were followed by a string of incoherent syllables as she finally wriggled out of her last sock. “Never again with the socks on.”

Cullen’s laughter roared loud against Skyhold’s quiet stones. “You still had on your socks?” He frowned.  “I distinctly remember...”

The sock in question hit him in the face.

“You left one on,” Essa complained. “Just one.”

She seemed more than a little disgruntled at the notion. Cullen leaned his head to the side, peering at her through moonlight and shadow. Essa tried to stare back, eyes blinking and smile lazy. He let his gaze travel over skin flushed with passion, and dappled with moonlight and scars. One sock, he thought, smiling, and both of her gloves. Cullen started laughing and couldn’t stop.

“’Sex gods’, you said?”

“Oh, shut up.” Essa ordered fondly. “At least we got you naked.”

“The second time,” he replied casually.

She snorted with mirth and Cullen watched her stretch, nose and brow wrinkling with a series of winces to punctuate an ever-broadening grin.

“You would think,” she retorted drily. “That we could have given me the same treatment on the third.”

“You might still have the other sock,” Cullen returned smugly. “If it hadn’t snagged on your way up the ladder.”

He had nearly taken a heel to the face when she kicked back trying to free her foot.

Essa sighed dreamily. “Remind me,” she told him on another yawn. “I really, _really_ like that thing you did with your teeth.”

“Just the one?”

She smirked. “I’ll remember most of the others.” She flung one hand out to pop him playfully on the arm. “I meant my arch.”

Her knuckles swept across his skin in a wandering caress. Cullen reached out, caught her hand in his, brought it to his lips for a kiss. 

“I’ll remind you,” he promised, his own yawn answering. “Are you cool enough?”

“Yes. Are you warm enough?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her.

“You are _more_ than fine,” she accused mischievously.

“I love you.” The words tore from him, helpless with amusement.

“I love you.” The rejoinder sounded supremely satisfied. “And we _are_ sex gods.”


End file.
